I Only Speak In Metaphors Now, Reality Is Too Stressful

If I were to write a letter to the person I was a year ago, I would say to focus on the fabric of my life. That sounds very broad and not at all helpful, but it’s true: I would tell that me to look at what makes up my life, what threads come together to weave something into a bigger picture. I would then tell her that this fabric is beautiful, every thread handpicked, all woven together into something so unique that no upstart indie producer could ruin it with their “groundbreaking filmmaking”. I would say to look at it and appreciate it, and to acknowledge the fact that any fabric, no matter how beautiful, can catch fire. I don’t particularly know what brought on this sudden feeling of being on shaky ground (I actually do, but we’ll get to that in a moment). 

I am so lonely, but in the strangest of ways: I miss the company of my own discomfort. Do you understand what I mean? Do I even make sense anymore? What I mean is I miss being in a day, or night, or what have you, and knowing that something better lies beyond. I miss going to bed at night dreaming of the very reachable, very approachable future, that would come to fruition if only I would grab it. Maybe that’s what I miss, after all. The choice. The control of the perhaps. I miss not being satisfied with my life, and the striving to make it better. 

This isn’t a feeling of stagnation, more of resignation to the unknowing. The sense of helplessness and injustice that walks around our home like it owns the place makes me sick to my stomach, and the unfortunate part of it all was that it was always there, and I simply allowed myself to be blind to it. What an unimaginable pain to have to face this alone, and what a humbling moment to realize that it was I who left others alone. We have much to do if we want to allow others to feel safe in their streets, their cars, their homes. Do not fool yourself into believing that it will be fixed with just a federal change: if we are ever to feel the peace we’re begging for, it must be taught in every faction to our children, our parents, our friends. 

I think it’s time that I wrote about hopelessful. 

It was my word for the year of 2019, and it took me over half that year to figure out why God gave me that in the first place, but now it is one of the most important things to me. For you see, it is not simply hopefulness. To reduce it to simple hopefulness would be to not understand the importance of crossing something out, and replacing it with a new thing. I can fill myself up with anything I like until I’m blue in the face, but what will that do? Nothing more that turning my mind against itself, than causing my brain to overheat like the lagging 90s computer it is. First I must take out what is blocking myself, and then let God fill me up with hope anew. 

Hope will not sustain you. It is meant to be a fire that warms you until you reach the finish line. Perhaps this time is when I need to close my eyes and let the less be crossed out, to be replaced with the ful. Maybe now is when we can take all that is ugly from our world, and replace it with peace.

I wrote a love letter once. Most of it is irrelevant to what I’m talking about now, but there was something in it that I liked: “Did you know that whenever you learn a new thing, your brain will light up neurons to hold it and make a path to it, so that whenever you think of that path, you will remember that new thing? When I met you my brain lit up and made a path to you, but now years later there are hundreds of paths that lead to you.” 

I spent years crafting the life around me, and those beautiful threads were lit up inside my brain, and after so many years of careful planning I came to find out the hard way that even a fabric made of light will burn. The good news is we are not made of light, but of water, a substance defined by its ability to change and adapt. We are not meant to flow through life and let it take us wherever it may go, we are meant to be the current that guides it where it rightfully belongs. Sometimes that current may look violent, but trust me, it has been churning for much longer than the surface will tell you, and it always meant to do this. I am too angry at the injustice that is happening, I am too angry at the mistakes I have made that have to be fixed, I am too angry at the people who I love who walk around this world like they are helpless to stop anything or have any say in their own lives, to give up. There is far too much work to be done, and there are far too many people who believe that they are powerless to do it. Even if it simply means that you speak up, that is a weapon far more powerful than some would have you believe. We no longer can claim that any fight is not our own.

I will not die — I hold too much of a grudge against life for that — but maybe this will be when I am reborn.